Mission Implementation

The legal relationship between the Agency and the selected Experimenter will be defined in an 'Experiment Mission Implementation Agreement'. This document will define the rights and duties of the Experimenter and the Agency relating to the mission being offered through this Announcement of Opportunity. It will also define the liabilities of both parties and the provisions concerning confidentiality and intellectual property rights. ESA's main responsibilities are to integrate the payload onto the carrier, to have the payload launched, operated in space and retrieved, and to disseminate the data.

The Experimenter's main responsibilities are to design, develop, manufacture, assemble, test and deliver his or her payload. He or she is also responsible for providing the necessary data for analytical integration on the carrier and for safety aspects.

The technical and operational interfaces will be defined in an 'Experiment Interface Agreement'.

The main milestones for the mission opportunity offered in this ESA Announcement of Opportunity are summarised in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Overall schedule for the early opportunity external payloads